Been working at least one hour every evening with the oven and hope to finish the dome before the next week. There are some things iam not so sure about the oven. Eg. The mortar is not rockhard yet maby its because its so cold where the oven stands probably 7 celcius.I will also start and put som time into brick cutting to make joints smaller because of the doubts with th mortar.The only strenght issue that i can really feel and you can almost see it when looking at the oven is the door part. Just doesnt feel right in my mind. I doo think did something smart here but too advanced for me maby. I also really think i have to make the buttress really carefully. If i would redo i think casable or simiöar is better.

Nice looking oven build! Based on the amount of research you have done, I am fairly sure you have seen some pics of my oven build in some old posts here. I can't add too much to the discussion but would suggest you not waste time mortaring each individual brick as you build the dome. If you go and find the Slice.SeriousEats.com photo gallery showing the building of the Donatella's oven in NYC by Stefano Ferrara, you will see he just pours on the mortar. I did it that way after individually mortaring a couple of rows in the dome. You have to move quick but it does a great job and takes almost no time in comparison. I did used a thin stick or something of that sort to force the mortar into joints as best I could. If mortar does not make it all the way down in between, no sweat. It won't make any difference in use.

Also, I used a stainless steel cable to control outward movement of the soldier course. I feel fairly confident that it was overkill since I could only get the cable sort of tight but have not seen any cracking of mortar that would indicate movement.

ok, thanks. I know when the oven is finished and hopefully working good i will probably see that i did some things overkill. Just to be on the safeside on the first time here. I sort of did like the donatella pictures but with a more dry version. Something in between normal mortar and wet slurry. I the bottom i always did put normal mortar.I was thinking what would happen to the mortar when all the water was gone if i used a wet slutty. Would it not shrink then?In any case here is how i got the circle back on track.

as you can see iam using all sorts of bricks new and old ones. the oven will look crazy from the inside different colors!But it dont matter to me at all only the preformance is important.I could use the mast in the middle to check the measurments all the way it varies at maximum 4 mm.Think i started to cut bricks a bit smaller here

The last three rows or so we strated to cut bricks more like a pizza slice. Dont know but it made sense to keep the joints small we also hade time so it didnt matter it took more time.I will close the dome tomorrow i think. Iam thinking of going one course more with smaller pizza slices and then finish with one small cut key stone at the top.

As far as possible i tried to overlap joints from previous course but sometimes it was pretty close though. If i was close i just made the next brick a little bit bigger so it overlapped more.

Alright finally the steel bands are finnished.Made them out of stainless since it holds better for heat.Iam going to attatch them in the weekend.

I booked a trip to naples yesterday for one week in may. Any suggestions on part of town to stay in? Walking distance to great pizzerias if possible. I plan to visit 4 pizzerias per day so 24 at minimum.The plan is to eat 1 pizza at every place Iam gonna review them all one by one on youtube if you guys are interested...

Here is the metal bands around the oven. After this picture i did fill all the spaces between the oven and the metal band with mortar due to not perfectly circle outside the oven. After that i did put more tension in the band and carved out all the sand.

The inside of the oven did look like crap.. Had to clean it and scrape of bits of mortar hanging down. I also hade to fill up spaces that did not have mortar from the inside. If somebody gonna do like me make sure to watch Toms picture of how to put mortar on the brick or do as Jeff describes.But fortunately there was only about 6 places where i had to fill in extra mortar.Anyways iam happy that the dome has not collapsed yet!!! The dome looks really cool even if its not as pretty and clean as i have seen other places.It feels really low and flat too..

in picture one can see that i sure have some places where the joints collide. Didnt look like that from above when i did it but hopefully it will hold. This is only the case in first 3 courses thankfully..